Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Passing more laws and restrictions to control lawful gun owners

By James Shott

There are of people
who are
confused about our
country’s founding
principles, quite a few of whom are in
positions to influence and dictate to others.

Jesse Jackson proposes to hold gun
manufacturers responsible for what anyone who buys, borrows or steals their
products might do with them. He believes
that "these assault weapons can only kill people and in fact
are threats to national security.”

Andrew Cuomo, the Governor of New
York, who proposed what he called the nation's toughest gun ban, does not know
what the 2nd Amendment is all about. "You don't need 10 bullets to kill a
deer," he howled, at a recent appearance. Gov. Cuomo seems to think the
Founding Fathers fought and died to guarantee our right to bear arms so we can
hunt and shoot targets. A shocking number of Americans share this fallacy.

The NRA produced a TV spot pointing
out that while President Obama's children attend a school protected by armed
guards, the president does not support that same protection for other children.
White House spokesman Jay Carney condemned the NRA for using the president's
children in pursuit of their agenda, a willful distortion of what the NRA did,
which was merely alluding to the security issue.

However, only hours later Mr. Obama
festooned himself with children as he announced measures and proposed new laws
to restrict the 2nd Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans in reaction to
the mass killing of students and staff in Sandy Hook, Conn.

Prior to Mr. Obama's enacting
increased background checks, privacy intrusions, etc., Vice President Joe Biden
in a meeting with gun-rights organizations said that "we simply don’t have
the time or manpower to prosecute everybody who lies on a form, that checks a
wrong box, that answers a question inaccurately,” but his task force then
recommended that Congress pass additional laws for the government to enforce.

The president said on the campaign
trail in 2008, "I will not take your shotgun away.I will not take your rifle away.I will not take your hand gun away."
This statement, along with other statements and actions, illustrates his
confused notion of how the U.S. government is designed. He is only the President
of the United States, not its emperor, and there are two other branches of
government that are co-equal with the Executive branch. He also seems not to
realize that the American people pay him to "preserve, protect and defend
the Constitution of the United States," not alter it to his liking.

In addition to guaranteeing
Americans a broad range of personal rights, such as free expression and to own
weapons sufficient to ward off tyrants and thugs, the Founders established a
system of checks and balances to prevent any of the three co-equal branches of
government from gaining too much power. You would expect someone claiming to
have been a constitutional law professor to understand this.

The tragic murders of 20 children
and six adults at the Sandy Hook school has proved to be too tempting a morsel for
the president and his fellow 2nd Amendment enemies to resist. Rahm Emanuel's
"Chicago crisis rule" still holds: the Sandy Hook crisis has not been
wasted.

The first information reported about
the incident was that an "assault weapon" was used at Sandy Hook, and
that was enough to launch a new fusillade of gun control rhetoric and proposed
measures to end such violence once and for all. However, more than a month
after the horrific shooting conflicting information about whether an
"assault weapon" was even used at Sandy Hook has finally leaked out.
NBC News' Pete Williams reported that, in fact, four handguns were found in the
school, and the only "assault weapon" anywhere around was found in
the trunk of a car. And what about rumors of a second person arrested there?

What actually happened at Sandy
Hook? We don't really know. Reporting of the incident by an incurious media has
greatly helped the emotional reaction to the shooting overpower sober and
rational analysis, and the mania to ban "assault weapons" has been
reborn.

It's easy to blame weapons and move
on, believing the problem is solved. But the easiest solution is often wrong,
which is the case where mass murders are concerned. The problem with focusing
on "assault weapons," even if one was used in these horrible
incidents, is that it ignores the true problem: what motivated some nut-job to
kill lots of people?

The one thing common to all mass
killings -- shootings, bombings or whatever -- is one or more persons filled
with evil intent or who is/are mentally unstable, or both. "Assault
weapons," or rocket launchers, or M1 Abrams tanks in the hands of 99.9
percent of Americans would result in zero deaths. You do not increase the
security of the people by restricting the rights of law-abiding citizens.

Our forefathers paid too high a
price to guarantee our personal liberty to sacrifice some of it in a vain
attempt to fix a problem that is not caused by the people having too much
liberty.

Update February 9, 2009: The worldwide financial crisis has made it harder on banks and credit card companies are facing rising delinquency...

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